Slashdot Mirror
The Great Internet Con
Imagine a preacher-turned-conman starting a company that claims to have developed a new, high-compression method of delivering full-screen video over the Internet. Imagine mandatory 36 hour shifts and prayer meetings. Imagine investors pouring millions of dollars into this venture, and high-profile executives joining the company in hopes of getting rich when it goes public. This is an astounding story, told in great depth by The Standard. Pixelon, the company in the article, has been mentioned in Slashdot once before: when they sponsored The Who's live reunion concert and webcast last October.
If you read even the first page you will find out Fenne wasn't a preacher. But who needs editorial control anyway?
Lowmag.net
In any case, it wouldn't take a "video person" to see that this company was a crock; any basic credit check on the founder would have done. If you'd sent in a video person who was as dilligent and intelligent as the investment bankers who did dude diligence on the company, he'd have fucked it up just as badly.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Certain expenses are fixed. Therefore, should volume inncrease, the cost of fixed expenses will be spread across more transactions.
The bandwidth of amateur radio frequencies is a lot more limited than available online storage space.
Why don't you implement a search engine where you have to pass an internet competancy test in order to index your page?
BTW, do driving licenses do anything to prevent unsafe driving, driving while talking on cell phone, DUI etc? No! there are plenty of unqualified drivers out there because licensing doesn't do shit.
Regulation sucks. remember that.
My first big web job was building a site for a pyramid scheme company......and it took us MONTHS to finally get paid.
Thats the nature of pyramid schemes. The person at the top often gets a decent return, but it takes time. Maybe you should have given him and 5 other people a dollar each and then sent your names to 5 people......... or just turned the guy in.
It is apparent that you have acquired all your "knowledge" of the subject from Snow Crash.
As for Western Christianity -- that's a common designation. It doesn't mean Catholicism. go do some research.
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-- Slashdot sucks.
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-- Slashdot sucks.
Well, there is religion, and there are beliefs, and the two are separate and distinct. Many different religions (and sects within them) preach similar beliefs, and you will find extremely varied beliefs even within a single church/synagogue/mosque/whatever at times. I used to wince at the thought of this distinction. Now, with fundamentalists kicking pretty much everyone who disagrees with them even slightly out of churches across the USA, including my family, I embrace it.
Well, there is religion, and there are beliefs, and the two are separate and distinct. Many different religions (and sects within them) preach similar beliefs, and you will find extremely varied beliefs even within a single church/synagogue/mosque/whatever at times.
I used to wince at the thought of this distinction. Now, with fundamentalists kicking pretty much everyone who disagrees with them even slightly out of churches across the USA, including my family, I embrace it.
Your rant smacks of elitism, and your arrogance demonstrates a rather myopic view what the internet can be used for. This sort of intellectual chest thumping is full of massive generalizations, and as such, your opinions strike me as shallow. Your comments about US politics strike me as a knee-jerk reaction of an underinformed idealist, rather than having any sort of insight or worthwhile commentary.
As a general principle, the content of the internet should in no way be filtered, and the same goes for the users. The uninitiated user, who may get their service from AOL, has just as much of a right to be using the internet as you, no matter what their intent is.
the interesting thing about this con is how irresponsible the VC's were. They saw an opportunity to fleece some virginian rube, and they wanted to move so fast that they didn't perform the most basic due dilligence on either the technology or the management team. As near as I can tell, the VC's (and I guess the people that invested in them) were the only ones who got hurt.
I think the VC's got what they deserved, and I feel far worse for the victims of Stanley's original investment con.
The company was promising to make the Internet just like TV.
I'llnever understand that mindset, I mean, we already have TV. When I was a kid we had 3 channels and there was nothing on (god forbid the president farted, all 3 channels would break in with a news flash). Today I have 500 channels of satellite, and guess what? There's still nothing on!
Normally I don't like to descend to the ad hominim level, but I can't reconcile what's written above with any conception I have of a rational, thoughtful person. The best my liberal-squishy side can do -- and I assure you, it's splendid at rationalizing unfathomable behaviors -- is to reason that perhaps your faculties have been shredded by years of untreated syphillis infection.
So I'll just cut to the chase here and call you a pinheaded idiot. Anyone who'd take the greatest communications environment ever known to mankind and restrict it to propellerheads who know a socket from a hole in their vacuum cleaner cannot possibly be a thinking human being; such thought is generally confined to subhumans like marketing executives and Senators.
By way of direct refutation, I offer this: my mom, who has instructed beer-free courses in gardening over the net from a remote little town in Ontario for two years now, falls firmly into the port-challenged group. And I suspect that by any objective standard she's contributing far more to the Net as a whole than you are, with your asinine bleatings on Slashdot.
The best part is, the crashing would be so reliable. It's the one thing we can consistently count on from Micro$haft.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Great example of the magic demanded from the
computer industry! Out of curiosity, when did this
professor make his statement? I'm interested in
how long the astute have been able to pinpoint
the problems this accurately, and not manage to
get anything done about it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
This won't work at all. The composite numbers representing the messages (actually Goedel numbers) will be much longer than the original message. Then, the harder you look for a prime with a short factorisation, the larger and longer the offset will be. This might work as a compression mechanism, but I really don't believe it's likely to achieve the 10000:1 compression you think.
Do the math, Stanley. Let's assume the lowest acceptable resolution for a TV frame: 320*240 at 16 bits per pixel. That's 150K bytes per frame, and there's 30 frames per second. But let's be generous and drop it to 15 frames per second. That leaves us with 2.25 megabytes per second.
And you're telling me you can compress this down to 5.6K bytes (minus IP protocol overhead). While there's plenty of room for improvement in image compression technologies, no one with a brain in their head is talking about compression ratios of more than 50:1 without massive image quality loss. Yet you're claiming this con man would have achieved a near-lossless compression ratio of 400:1.
You, and your former employer, are full of sh*t, dude.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Have you listened to the geezers and nuts on the 80 meter band?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Make that "a number with a short factorisation", not "a prime...". Like duh!
There is a simple and well-known algorithm for compression of any amount of data into a single bit. The bits are added togeteher, repeatedly, until a single bit remains. There is an obvious shortcut, as all possible data combinations, save all 0's, map to 1.
:)
The catch is that there's no known way to decompress (except in the special case of 0 with a known data size
>>I think your elitist vision of a net only accessible to the privileged educated few would be quite horrible
Why? Because we can have quality websites filled with stuff that we can appreciate?
Who judges? You? You may not give a rat's ass about Granny Lunkert's county-fair-winning rhubarb pie recipe and photos of "skeeter23"'s huntin' dawg, but their friends and family do. That's the point. The internet isn't just for the 'Technological Elite', it's for everybody, like it or not. That's called "democracy".
--Riff
"When I smile, I have a mouth full of teeth; when I frown, I'm not even here."
It's not surprising at all that this story is getting legs - after all, the news has been awash in stories of internet zillionairres and transformed industries for years now. It's only fitting that a cautionary tale of reckless avarice leading to ruin gets some run as well. The biggest fools in all of this were the VC bunch, who discarded every common-sense investing rule in their rush to profit from the IPO. Like the article mentioned, even a cursory background check of this guy (which a secretary could have performed in a day) would have sent up red flags.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
A tax deduction means that you don't pay tax *on that money*, not that you save that ammount.
If you lose $1M and get to deduct it, it saves you taxrate * $1M, not $1M. Even at those silly canadian tax rates, you're *much* better off with the money than with the deduction.
On the othe rhand a tax *credit* is dollar for dollar: a $1 tax credit reduces your taxes by $1, and is essentially the government paying it. However, most tax credits are at less than 100% (but we have some popular 100% ones in the US for the middle and lower classes).
hawk
The Internet does *not* need to become more like amateur radio. If you spend any time with hams, you quickly find out that the spend most of their time arguing about whether they should still require Morse code as a requirement for getting a license. The divisions within the ham radio community are killing the hobby. The average age of operators is getting older and older and very few new people want to get into something that is seen as a pastime for cranky old men. All this because of an argument over a technology that has been largely obsolete for half a century!
An Internet Driver's License is an inherently bad idea. Yes, there are lots of personal pages out there that have little relevence outside a small group of friends and relatives, but that it kind of the point. The Internet provides one to many communication without regard to distance. Many of us here belong to communities of interest outside the mainstream and use the web to keep in touch with others in these communities. Slashdot itself is an excellent example of this.
One of the idealistic promises of opening up the Internet was that it would allow direct communication with people in countries where contact with the outside is discouraged. How many Internet licenses do you think would be issued in places like Myanmar or China or North Korea? Do you think that people in these countries should be categorically denied access to information freedom to spare you the inconvenience of getting the occasional personal page in your Google results?
As the Internet continues to grow over the next several years, we will see more self-defined content rating anyhow. I would be perfectly happy to include an XML tag that says something like:
category=personal
commerce=no
bandwidth-priority=low
into my personal page. People who want to see pictures of my dog will go there when they want and I don't really care if no one else ever sees it. This would also allow me to set my viewing filter to something like:
subject-matter="TRS-80"
and I could be back to the mid 70s before most Slashdotters were born and there was a lot less congestion on the Internet!
Thank God I live in Europe, where the kind of rampant capitalism the US practices is tempered with a more humane socialist brand of politics.
Thank God I live on the Internet, which is big enough to accomodate pictures-of-people-and-pets-loving hoi polloi like me and arrogant socialist sneering assholes like you.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
This man was merely providing a service, standardizing internet video into a single application, taking people's money and making a run for it. This action will ruin the tech industry, bring down the stock market and the commies will take over. He's being punished for being too successful and his freedom to innovate is being restricted.
Or something like that.......
He makes sweeping generalizations (e.g. no one who started on AOL has ever switched to a different provider, ever, much less learned anything about the 'net, technology, personal computers, etc.; and the comment about the unwashed masses being "minimally educated, apathetic peasents [sic]"), uses straw men (e.g. the responder suggests that an elitist 'net that doesn't allow certains kinds of sites and, effectively, censors content, would be worse than wading through inane sites that pander to the masses--this gets re-interpreted by Mr. Erikson as "what do you have against informative and non-corporate controlled web sites?", which is not at all what the criticism was about), and basically adds no new information, or even an original perspective on the situation.
It's the same old argument that's been repeated over and over throughout history: the masses don't know enough to decide for themselves what is best for them, and we should [a) decide for them or b) let them wallow in their own ignorance while we pursue the more refined arts, in a glorious intellectual paradise where no outsiders can sully our crytalline thoughts and ideas].
It is clear to me, that non of you read the article, or at least failed to read it with an open mind. There was no internet con here. This is a story of a con man, on the run from the law, who created a legitimate software company, who overbilled their product (Microsoft does this all the time), and made some major marketing blunders,and had his company stolen from under him by his board of directers, which then collapsed without him. Nobody was cheated, the company is still estimated to be worth 25 million dollars, only slightly less than the actual investments, which is a whole lot better than most internet companies. All marketing is in reality a con, you emphasis the good and ingnore the bad. This man is doing time for his previous crimes, not for anything in connection with his software business.
Are you so dense you cannot learn to spell glossolalia right, even though it was already spelled out for you in my previous post? And why the bogus capitalization, we're not writing German here.
Now, looking over the fact that you can't even spell right the name of a linguistic (or rather, psychological) phenomenon that you purport to know, I feel obliged to remind you that the second phenomenon you referred to (known as xenoglossia) was never observed to be genuine, except under externally induced hypgnosis. But perhaps you have some references to counter that, right?
It is apparent that you have acquired all your "knowledge" of the subject from Snow Crash.
It is evident that you acquired all your knowledge of the subject from Snow White.
As for Western Christianity -- that's a common designation. It doesn't mean Catholicism. go do some research.
Where is that 'common', Joe? What then, in Heaven's name, do you mean by it, if not the opposition between Western rites (Roman) and Eastern rites (Orthodox)? Do I really have to make you aware of the fact that Pentecostal Protestantism (what you probably think of when you say Christian) is not prevalent anywhere else but in the good ole' USofA? Do you think the 'West' (however you define it) is restricted to Uncle Sam? If so, then why not call it by its proper name, damn it?
You go do some research, because not only you need a clue desperately, but you also seem to be the one who's still in high school.
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
There is a Russian saying "Fraud is a tax on the stupid".
"Do you think we could wipe out world hunger forever if scientists figured out how to make AOL's Free CD's edible?"-
That's not a bad thing. Maybe through the 'net they'll learn.
LOL! These are the kind of minimally educated apathetic peasents which would never have got onto the net unless "visionaries" like Steve Jobs hadn't come up with a way of making connecting to the net as idiot-proof as possible. And now thanks to AOL we've got millions of them, and how many of them have changed? None, they're all still using AOL.
I think your elitist vision of a net only accessible to the privileged educated few would be quite horrible
Why? Because we can have quality websites filled with stuff that we can appreciate? Because rather than having to pander to corporate whims we can design the web to suit us? What about this fills you with such fear?
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Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
once they reach into the millions.
Heck, Royal Bank just admitted that some of its traders lied about stock values to manipulate peoples pension funds: Toront o Star
The rationale?
`Everybody does it,'' said one industry veteran.
Ah, so that makes it all better.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
And when I see articles like this, like I said many years later, you can clearly see the need for information like that. People can be easily tricked when "new technology" is concerned.
But a question which I find more interesting is how situations like this can be put to a stop? The Internet is growing and accessing it becomes easier every week, figurly speaking offcourse. Which also means, to a certain extent, that people loose focus on how things really work. Which is essential when developments like this are concerned. I'm really interessted how those companies came to their decision to invest. Was it the cheap and slick speech of this gentlemen or did they really consult some experts on this subject?
Basicly this just shows us that it is oh so important to know what you are talking about when technology like this is concerned. When people want you to give them some money to allow them to develop great things (tm) be vary carefull and make sure you know whats really going on.
You seem to argue that that verse means that all Christians MUST drink poision, wrastle snakes, etc. Can you not follow how the phrase "these signs will accompany those who believe" allows for something other than a one-to-one relationship between Christians and snake handlers?
Incidentally, that particular verse is questioned by a lot of people because the earliest manuscripts of Mark simply don't have it. It is possible that the (few) early manuscripts we have could well be wrong, and that these verses might be part of THE manuscript that Mark wrote. But honestly I doubt it.
In any case: I am not an inerrantist. That is, while I will defend the reliability and usefulness of the Bible to the death, I feel no need to claim that "every word is the literal word of God". Literal inerrancy is a weak position because it ignores the fact that the step from language to meaning is a big one.
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-- Slashdot sucks.
You obviously didn't read the entire story.
This was not JUST an 'internet scam'. The internet had nothing to do with the scamming itself. The internet only had to do with a technology the company claimed to have developed.
It might as well have been a better rat trap, this guy could've probably sold that to investors too.
Why do we link to sites that have annoying pop-up?
I followed the link to The Standard and was immediately greated with a pop-up, I closed that window to be greeted by another in it's place. I closed that window, and then I closed the new browser that I had opened for the link.
F--- The Standard!
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Are you thinking of the sort of test that you needed to retake about 48 times before successfully posting to slashdot?
Thank God I live in Europe, where the kind of rampant capitalism the US practices is tempered with a more humane socialist brand of politics.
The kind of humane socialist politics which lets the people do what they want unless it offends their betters?
I am quite happy that the average idiot can now create a web page with pictures of their dog. And I actually think I'm pretty good at computers but I have no idea what UDP is or what port HTTP uses.
When all the people looked at the Emperor's new clothes, all of them commented on how fine they looked, and not one of them would dare mention that the Emperor was naked....
*closes storybook* oh. right.
Internet like TV? like AOL/TW?
semantics are everything!
I find it interesting that these things have been going on for years, and it's only now that people are beginning to pay attention to them.
In bull markets, people ignore the bad news and pay attention to the good news. In bear markets, people pay attention to the bad news, and ignore the good news.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. There is much more to come.
They did send in a video guy. He invested before he even reported back to them.
carlos
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As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
No kidding, following this story I found a very funny/interesting site describing itself as "the dot-com deadpool" at FuckedCompany.com.
They have literally almost 300 *recent* stories about various dot-coms and how they fucked up in some way either screwing over their customers, employees, etc. or all of the above. The antics include Hollywood Video execs emailing their subsidiary Reel.com's CEO to fire all or most of the employees and the CEO simply forwards the e-mail to all in the company, Kozmo.com requiring almost every employee to submit to a detailed background check (and 50+ employees quitting or being fired), & copies of bad customer service feedbacks to Kozmo.com.
GEE, I'm glad I stayed with my solid "old economy", more traditional Silicon Valley electronics employer -- we've been among the fastest growing companies in the USA for several years (we're an ancient 9 years old), we're merging, acquiring, going IPO, making stock option money for employees and no B.S. even close to this stuff! I guess the dot-coms are finally realizing that even "new economy" companies need some kind of business-running know-how! It's a humbling time for all of us...
Dropping the religion and dropping the trappings of the religion are two different things. As contemptible as people like the Bakkers were, who dropped the religion but kept up the act, there are still folks like Billy Graham out there.
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This is not my sandwich.
This proves the point that it is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
Around 1990, a friend of mine got excited about someone he'd met in San Diego who was developing a great new technology to tranfer movies over the phone line. It was supposed to put a full movie in 15 minutes at the same quality as a vcr.
I tried to explain about theoretical limits and the like to my friend (who was just short of brilliant), but he was convinced.
A fem months (couple of years?) later, I read in the Las Vegas paper about the arrest of a con-man in San Diego, who had had a scheme to compress movies and . . .
SO couldn't this guy have come up with something original, instead of somethign that had already sent someone to prison???
hawk, esq., never ceasing to be amazed at the stupidty of criminals
This is what happens when you get people excited over the prospect of some "new technology" that will "revolutionize the Internet". It is happening all over the place, and the Venture Capitalists are pouring money into things they don't, won't and can't understand. The stock market finally shook itself up, I expect the VC market to do the same, as investors become increasingly wary on where their money is going and what is is doing while it is there.
Enigma
Enigma
Nah, Tim Berners-Lee is a Brit.
You're right about HTTP - developed at CERN, Switzerland, wasn't it?
Information wants to be beer.
Does anyone else find it amusing that stories of con artists that would ordinarily not be newsworthy, are treated differently because they are 'on the web'? As far as I can tell, this guy is just another conman who managed to sucker people into buying into his scheme and then running off with the money.
Any time there are gullible people looking to make fast money there will be people like this - the Internet hasn't changed that - it's just another area to exploit.
You should feel slimy if you chose not to walk away from a job like that.
All of us should make life difficult for pyramid schemers at every opportunity. I've seen lives ruined because of bastards like this. Sure, they were more naive than you or I like to think we are, but that doesn't make it okay for somebody to bankrupt them.
The case has even been made (in P.J. O'Rourke's book "Eat the Rich") that the entire economy of Albania collapsed mainly because of pyramid schemes. Remember the war in Kosovo? Might not have happened if it wasn't for those punk-ass ex-KGB mofia mother f*$%@!#% ripping off everybody's last dime.
I strongly urge everybody to be an obstacle to every con like this that has the misfortune of stubling by you. Rip-off schemes make it harder to do legitimate business, which hurts all of us.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
think about it, this guy got everything he ever wanted probably:
a respectable job at a startup
being the spiritual leader in a high pressure situation
hell, he got the WHO to give a reunion concert
and the only thing that was actually lost were sucker VC's money. Well, it serves the VC's wrong for not doing their homework. And I bet his employees were well compensated.
Well, it's not what the internet commerce business was built for, but I think the majority of the people here prospered.
No kidding. How can you take anybody with that haircut seriously enough to give them money? He looks like the guitar player from Hall and Oates, or some goddamned Firebird-driving Mecklenberg used car salesman. Never trust a man with a perm and a skinny necktie. If he has a moustache to go with, don't let him near the high school, either.
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This is not my sandwich.
A: Apple and NeXT employees. Also, Microsoft employees. And don't forget Oracle employees. Oh yeah, while I'm at it, Sun employees.
Steve, Bill, Larry, and Scott each have wild passions that require complete submission to fulfill. Steve and Bill have succeeded well to this point (in their employees eyes, and some of America's). Larry's coming along, although he and Scott are both fanatical about ending Bill's regime.
In other words, this situation is atypical because noone truly looked into his background. The four mentioned above were around before backgrounds existed at least in their arena.
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
What was the video quality like?
" well, yea, we have some bugs with version 1.0 but those have been addressed with the new release, so were focusing our attention on the new product."
The company has been in business for over eight years, never produced a product past the beta stage & never made a profit. The sad thing is that there is never a shortage of stooges to step up and throw away their money.
I read that early this morning (about 4AM). Look at that guy. Pretty scary, especially that closeup photo. What a loon.
I think I would have been tipped off when he started dropping names like the CIA, the Saudi Royal family and whatnot. "Hi there, I live in my Hyundai, but I used to work for the CIA and now I have developed a new product and I would love to get you on the ground floor.." Bzzzt! Nut Alarm!
Who has worked for someone like this before? You know, the cult leader type who makes proclaimations, expects undying devotion from his staff, regularly promotes and fires arbitrarily and so on? I worked for someone like this for awhile. He used to get depressed and sulk whenever he suspected people did not like or trust him. Then he would suddenly get happy and start screwing people over; cutting back their salary, reading their email, finding reasons to fire people, etc.
I don't think it has anything to do with "The New Economy" or "The Internet" but rather the timeless wisdom of P.T. Barnum. Pretty good research by The Standard, I wish all news articles were that good.
Also, I don't think he did anything wrong. All he did, both in Tennesee and California, is take advantage of people's insatiable greed and their suceptibility for quick buck schemes. He should get paid for teaching people how to avoid conmen.
I have to agree. I don't think this is any worse than the latest ploys by MCI, AT&T, etc. for getting people to change their phone companies.
They send a check addressed to you. No paperwork included. On the check it has a disclaimer in small writing that says cashing this check amounts to giving AT&T the permission to switch your long-distance phone service.
I think that's more of an illegal scam than this one...
but my question about this scam is, where were all the technology guys that developed this supposed compression technology? Isn't it kind of weird if there weren't any?
The internet is a mass medium, and as such, will be the playground of con-artists, in the same way that con-artists have played in all the mediums of the past. That's an undisputed fact. It's especially vulnerable right now because there are many people that do not understand nor see the bigger picture. Society should try to prevent this stuff from happening, but at the same time, it's always 'caveat emptor'.
This is just a more obvious con. You need to look below the surface for the surreptitous con's that happen every day, yet are rarely questioned. Consider a lot of brand marketing and corporate activities that play upon individuals need to believe and belong, or other emotional issues. They play on people's confidence in another way. I could draw examples from corporate product marketing preying on teenagers need for belonging.
-- Matthew - matthew.gream@pobox.com, http://matthewgream.net
He has no official Gubmint ID and wants to be paid out of the company expenses fund instead of drawing a salary, you know, like REAL employees!
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Time to switch to decaf. UDP is uniform datagram protocol and HTTP uses port 80 by default although it doesn't have to, you can set it up how you like. The 'net is better because it's diverse and elitism only has a place in the British Foreign Office. As broadband increasingly becomes available (keep holding your breath) the bandwidth-wasters will become irrelevant. I agree with most of what you say about the Yanks though, although the UK doesn't have most of the nice laws that Scandinavia has.
On freshmeat yesterday, a GPL compressor for still and moving images that does Low Bit-Rate Image and Video Coding with Weighted Finite Automata, outperforming JPEG and is competitive with fractal and wavelet compression. Efficient enough to decode movies in software. I grabbed the code and checked out the demo images: it does seem to work.
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Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
I just downloaded Pixelon yesterday! It works well, that' the weird thing... If this is such a con, then how DOES IT ACTUALLY work? MPEG?
Or maybe this is another UL, and I'm aiding its propagation...
BTW, why are you marked down as flamebait? Special crack being handed out today, or what...?
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Not to slam religious people, but Stanley/Fenne/Whatshisface preyed upon quite a few older folks, country folks, naive investors.. people who felt a compulsion to believe.. usually in some larger benificence.
Again, I'm not saying that the set of religious people equals the set of suckers -- I know far too many beings who are both intellectual and spiritual -- but would I be wrong in assuming that the latter is certainly a more viable subset for this kind of idiocy? Is there some tendency for those who need a Good Guy for codifying their morals, ethics, cosmology, etc. to also fall prey to a "gold-tounged salesman" .. who sells himself as a reasonable facsimile?
There seems to be more than mere gullibility here; it's as if the main character of this sordid little adventure targetted people who would not only believe, but who had an inner desire or need to believe.
Asbestos suit activated,
-----
"O Lord, grant me the courage to change the things I can,
the serenity to accept those I cannot, and a big pile of money."
".sig,
Bite the hand.
and the only thing that was actually lost were sucker VC's money. Well, it serves the VC's wrong for not doing their homework. And I bet his employees were well compensated.
The employees may or may not have been well paid. I bet they were very underpaid their last couple of weeks (read: they probably didn't get their last paychecks). The stock options obviously didn't pan out either.
Even if what you say were true, and everyone except the VC's (who got defrauded out of their investemnts) prospered, this is very short term prosperity indeed. Now the money has run out, the people are unemployed, and the VCs in question may well never invest in another internet startup again.
This kind of thing makes it more difficult for legitimate small-time startups to get off the ground, and as a result leads to less, not more, prosperity.
It isn't easy having much sympathy for wealthy VCs who throw their money around, particularly when we see really inane startups being so funded, but relishing their being defrauded is highly counterproductive IMHO. Far better to relish this priest finally getting sex the way he wants it for, the next twenty years, from his cell mate, forcefully, from behind.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
You are talking about "live" 2-way video. 1-way video can compensate for internet problems through buffering. You can always have larger and larger buffers. At some point you are prebuffering the whole thing and are guarenteed not to have any problems.
:)
1-way transmission of full screen video over the internet happens every day. I haven't turned on my TV in 3 months now because I watch everything off of the internet now. Sure a T1 is a heck of a lot more expensive than cable, but it has many other uses.
-- Virtual Windows Project
GET rid of the TEXT, and the AV. The PSTN was made to carry VOICE. The rest is destroying MY bandwith....
Shoot, this is not even worth it.
IHBT ? IHL?
Tom
Reality does not happen until you analyze the dots. -Don DeLillo (Underworld)
Amen
While what you say is correct in a general way, it doesn't cover this situation. (I'm not a fan of Billy Graham, even after reading one of his books in my teens...but that has nothing to do with the price of PCs in Tokyo.)
By being a member of a religous ritual -- even promoting it -- that religon is not being discarded, thus;
Perhaps this should be interpreted as "Televangelist who dropped the religion"
Is an almost humorous way to smooth over religous differences. Unfortunately, it's not true in this instance. A religion was used when he was a preacher, and it looks like he still uses it. That he might not be ernest is an unrelated issue.
To address your main point, it's still unproven that he, the Bakkers, Billy Graham, the Pope, Dali Lama, or other religous leaders are or aren't religous. Only they can answer that. If you want to pass judgement on who has "real" beliefs, you might want to start another thread.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Sending in a video person might help. It depends on the skill of the conman. If he said something that didn't make sense, then a good tech would be able to spot it. If he didn't understand a concept that should be obvious (eg bitrate or compression ratios) he would be able to spot it.
Of course a skilled conman would be able to judge whether he could intimidate the tech by suggesting better knowledge, or whether to cloud the issue by mentioning trade secrets, but this would provide an extra layer of protection. Getting a technical opinion on the matter would be an extra layer of safety, and at least as useful as getting the opinion of a financial expert. Its a matter of getting enough levels of security.
I'll now slightly contradict myself by suggesting that its quite reasonable that a lot of potential investors did this, and saw this guy for the con artist he was and decided not to invest their money in his business. He doesn't really want people who might ask awkward questions anyway.
Pity. Sounded like a good story :)
Did anyone ever get anywhere with caching slashdotted pages in case of the "effect"?
(Beginning rant now ...)
When I was a wee young lad, a professor sighed and told me "The difference between computer science and other forms of engineering is that if someone wanted a bridge built over the Chicago River, for example, and one bid said the work could be done in 8 months and cost $100K and another bid said 1 month and cost $10K, the person would choose the first bid, because the first bid seems practical and reasonable while the second bid seems unrealistic. Now if that person wanted a computer project done, no matter how improbable the smaller bid was, the person would choose that bid!" Now, many years later, I have witnessed the truth to that story that people always want miracles out of programmers no matter what we know can be done.
Until people learn that computers is a science and not magic, I think cons like this will continue. Perhaps some will be smaller (stretching the truth of how successful a start up will be) and not as large as this con, but they will continue until people learn.
(...ending rant now)
Or you could just be working in Beverly Hills. (Please don't let there be any moderators from there reading this.)
kwsNI
Perhaps this should be interpreted as "Televangelist who dropped the religion"
The difference is that an entrpreneur actually has the ability/product advertised to investers. Just because it fails, because of lack of market, or whatever other reason, doesn't make it a con. This guy didn't have the revolutionary technology that he claimed, it was a con.
Actually, it is you who has reasoned defectively.
In fact, some people who profess to be Christians, and many others of different beliefs, do indeed drink poison and live. Can you PROVE that these things are impossible? If you can't then you shouldn't make such strong statements.
Let's go back and see what scripture says:
The scripture doesn't say "just any old poison," it says deadly poison. In other words, a Christian can drink a gallon of drano laced with a pound of cyanide and "it will not hurt them at all." It is not my responsibility to prove it impossible, for the burden of proof falls upon he who alleges. And I believe that it was the Bible and its believers who made this allogation long before I ever lived. Your allegation that I'm making "strong statements" is fairly idiotic in light of the fact that you are defending a book which claims you can drink deadly poison and survive, move a mountain with your faith, and make a fig tree wither immediately with your faith.
I find it quite amusing that you think that your endorsement, or lack thereof, can make a difference one way or the other as to what is possible in this universe and what is not. You would be best served by leaving these topics to those more qualified and knowledgable than yourself.
I find it rather amazing that you believe in a book in which people walk on water, rise from the dead, and are sucked up to heaven in fiery chariots. And insisting that I'm not "qualified" or "knowledgable" enough to point out the flaws in scripture is an ad hominem. If my argument is wrong, then you should be able to refute it easily. Otherwise, why do you need to attack me?
Furthermore, your tone could not be much more condescending. Not very becoming of a Christian, supposedly a person with ultimate humility.
Feel free to email me if you would like me to show you many of the numerous flaws and contradictions in the Bible.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Um, the VC's involved with Pixelon did just that.. or close enough to it.
They were so quick to believe that Pixelon could deliver, and wanted to believe in The Big Internet Payoff so desperately, that they didn't even bother to investigate Fenne. And a little legwork would have unraveled the whole shebang.
I agree with the original poster: These folks know how to hack into people, like some crazy mix of B. F. Skinner and the l0pht. And, people have been suckered completely by lesser attempts.
Look at our buddies, the Scientologists. Now, if there ever was a see-through scam, Scientology is it, which is something (I hope!) all thinking people can agree on. But the fact remains that they control their members rather well. Many of them would choose to stay, even though the core sales pitch isn't really very good. (Does it surprise you that people are fooled by the "abilities" of computers when some of them believe in the readings of an E-meter?)
Mr. Stanley could have easily become another Jim Jones or L. Ron Hubbard; oddly enough, his belief in Old Time Religion probably prohibited that -- or he was as stupid as the next crook, looking only to make a quick buck and nothing more. Nonetheless, he was slick, and knew how to get seasoned investment bankers to cough up millions for literally no good reason.
-----
"O Lord, grant me the courage to change the things I can,
the serenity to accept those I cannot, and a big pile of money."
".sig,
...unless he can drink deadly poison and survive, move a mountain with his faith and faith alone, and make a fig tree wither with his faith and faith alone. Why is the Bible given such respect despite the fact that it cannot live up to its grandiose claims? And why is Billy Graham given such respect despite the fact that he believes a book which claims that people walk on water and rise from the dead?
Anyone is welcome to challenge my allegations. Feel free to email me.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
The sad part about all of this is just how close Pixelon was to a cult. I am glad that I was never part of Fenne's prayer meetings or experienced his tyranitcal fits, but the sad thing is that he was fired in NOVEMBER. Fenne had no part in the company for the last 6 months, yet the company was still dealing with his foul-ups everyday. Look at I-bash....$16 Million and Pixelon never had the rights to broadcast the archived material over the net. That was money that could have been used in reseaching video and audio compression technologies or how to make a better hair dye for convicts....anything for that matter. Well, now I am a bit wiser and maybe a bit more cynical, but the real problem I am having is should I even put Pixelon down on my resume? And what about the 60 employees or so that never saw their last pack checks?
You know, that was the first thing that occurred to me, too. Except that maybe being a con-man is a step up from being a preacher.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Oh , Europeans are completely ungreatefull. Not only US saved their ass twice but also created the very Net we are talking about and they still bitch on every ocassion they get.
I am Mostly talking about live video. You can and people do buffer video to view. This is nothing more than File transfers like FTP no magic there. If you are willing to wait for the down load and it can take some time it is the only way to do high quality one way video over the Internet. The thing that made the T1 work was that it was a point to point connection with no other traffic. So it could be made and was deterministic. If you want live news and TV like Video? Doing it over the Internet and by passing the Cable companies deterministic network is not an option at this time.
The VCs were stupid for forgetting the first law of business: Assume everyone is a lying bastard until they prove beyond a reasonable doubt otherwise.
The employees were stupid for forgetting the first law of the job market: Keep your resume up to date.
It's taken me a long time to get to the cynical point that I'm at now, but I no longer put any loyalty into my job (I'm only here for the paycheck) and I always assume salesmen are hiding something (the first question I ask them is, "So, how do you make your money?").
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
That is, unless, someone can do the following for me:
1. Drink poison and survive
2. Move a mountain with faith and faith alone
3. Make a fig tree wither immediately with faith and faith alone.
But no Christian can, despite the fact that the Bible says otherwise.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
which would mean it wouldn't create unique integers.
.]).
Aleph-naught is the measure of infinity for the integers and rationals, while Aleph-1 is the measure for the reals. In general, 2^Aleph-n = Aleph n+1
I *think* that in using all patterns for all pseudo-random number generators, you have 2^Aleph-0 possibilities, meaning that you cannot store the result in an integer (or any finite number of integers).
But then, I don't use this math all that often (but we actually had to take such things into account in my dissertation while designing the algorithm [what do I mean, "we"??? I bounced things off of the committte members, but the designe is purely mine . .
hawk
The last elitist pig statement was meant as sarcasm.
Here's my point... statements such as "These homepages lack any worthwhile content..." and the like ring as elitist and/or corporate to me.
Certainly, the internet was created for the transfer of information. Now that it has become open to the unwashed masses, it has become a forum for expression, some good, some bad some ugly.
Is all web content worthwhile? Maybe, maybe not. Go ahead and post pictures of your pets, pr0n, and poetry. I'm not one to judge and I distrust anyone who thinks they can.
IMHO, personal pages (however worthy) are the only thing that keeps the internet from becoming one huge marketing tool like television.
Egad.
You are an idiot. The explosion onto the net has allowed me to buy DVDs and hardware at asinine prices for over two years now.
Thank you VC and stock market hucksters!
matt
You can't keep anything hidden from top CEOs these days...
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
No, conmen louse all your money. Too bad it can't be deloused
Couldn't you just cross through the small print and then cash it?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.
And the lord did cometh down fromt he mountain, and he said unto his people "Thou shalt moderate down the unbelievers, for they shall have negative karma"
Amen
If I remember correctly, it's:
k enneth.html has got some more info on it.
The title of an REM song (from their album Monster).
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/3142/
later
Dan
If it sounds too good to be true, it probally is.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
But especially on the field of data compression, there /are/ tons of people coming up with record-breaking, never-before-seen compression rates. Of course they can't say anything specific because they're trying to get a patent on it... And money. Some of the claims for lossless compression ('infinite compression schemes') even are proven to be false (counting argument) and get on the nerves of comp.compression regulars. The FAQ for that newsgroup sums up some of the cases (see items [9] and [10]).
If you want live news and TV like Video? Doing it over the Internet and by passing the Cable companies deterministic network is not an option at this time.
I don't see why not. For the news, at least, a 10-second delay for buffering (or even a couple of minutes delay, if you have the buffer capacity) is perfectly acceptable.
As the previous poster pointed out, buffering is only *not* a viable option when you need interactivity.
Who would've thought it?
"You can't win. You can't break even. You can't quit." -A. Ginsberg
Why? Because we can have quality websites filled with stuff that we can appreciate? Because rather than having to pander to corporate whims we can design the web to suit us? What about this fills you with such fear?
Hey dumbass, how about you don't visit the big evil corporate sites that are invading your world. The next time you see a link to www.spendallyourmoney.com don't click on it! And when you set up a public server, make it only run gopher and transmit data in EBCDIC; so only you and your l33t friends can see it. Last I checked, no one forced you to put up a web site that used Oracle to serve up dynamically generated Flash animations to a Java applet.
Although I'm sure you knew everything about the Internet the first time you logged onto a public terminal, there are many who are just learning. Even if only 1% becomes familar with the underlying technologies, would you deny them the chance?
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
Why? Because we can have quality websites filled with stuff that we can appreciate?
Well, for one, nobody's forcing you to look at the low-quality websites (such as this one). Secondly, the low-quality websites may be sucking bandwidth, but if it wasn't for the ... umm... "unwashed masses" using the Internet, we wouldn't have telcos drooling to drop in new optic fiber and speed it up! Honestly man, take a step back and look at yourself. You're talking like a stereotypical technological elitist.
Because rather than having to pander to corporate whims we can design the web to suit us?
Who is 'us'? You can design your web to suit yourself, just don't follow any link to a site you haven't checked for 'Nostalgia Compliance' (tm)
What about this fills you with such fear?
Well, the thought of someone as closed-minded as you dictating what should and shouldn't be on the web.
Hehe... or I could have skipped the rebuttal and just called you a Fascist. On second thought -
Fascist!
Wah!
Now that that's done, do you want the Bush corporate interests or the Gore corporate interests to dictate public policy?
Wah!
That's the whole stock market bubble in a nutshell. The problem (if you want to call it that) is that there's more money out there and it has about the same number of outlets for investment. It winds up going into one of two places:
What it really boils down to is that a combination of greater real wealth and less even distribution of it make the equities market a less attractive investment.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
*Sigh* Back in the good old days... Now those Geocities peasants have destroyed the "signal to noise ratio" of the Internet and diluted all that porno to the point where I can't find any good stuff anymore!!!
Why won't Geocities people put up some "worthwile content?" Like breasts!
Elitist pig. Go back to your TRS-80 and die. :)
Wah!
By silencing the "elitist pigs" you are actually introducing elitism, by making a subjective judgement that something is worthless and therefore ought to be silenced.
Your post pointed out an obvious flaw in logic. It was redundant and thus decreased the S/N ratio.
Do you have any well-reasoned criticism of my post, or are you just going waste my time by posting flames and poor logic?
I'll give you 3 guesses.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
I'm reminded of the time Bart and Milhouse are cleaning the organ pipes in the church and discussing the existance of one's "soul." The question arises, "But why would the church lie to us?" as the camera flashes to Rev. Lovejoy counting the piles of money from the collection plate.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
Have you ever considered posibility that ,despite being American, English might not be my native language?
From looking at there page if you try to order there stuff they don't have anykind of contact info on the page other then email. Now with any kind of bussiness that i as I'm sure you have delt with on the intenet there is always a secondary contact method. Wanna deface?
if ($name eq "Mike"); {
print "laters, Mike";
}else{
if ($name eq "Mike"); {
print "laters, Mike";
}else{
print "who are you and how did you get in her
What does "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" mean?
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
The up side is that if this bozo can sucker all those investors into giving him big bucks, SO CAN YOU with your GOOD idea. If you've got a hot idea and are thinking of starting an internet company, now is the time. I suspect the VC's will wise up at some point and then it will be hard to get the cash even for legit start-up-wannabes.
nuff said
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
I think you are entirely correct with this assessment of the average Joe Sixpack internet user. There used to be a time when search engines were flooded with hundreds of links to pr0n sites. Nowadays, although the pr0n sites are still present, there is also a deluge of the aforementioned personal homepages. These homepages lack any worthwhile content and thus spoil the signal to noise ratio of the internet, making it almost impossible to use a search engine to track down useful information.
In order for people to gain an amateur radio license, it is first necessary for them to pass an examination. This certification process helps to teach prospective radio amateurs about good telecommunications practice and also tends to weed out people with a Geocities homepage mentality. Therefore, the (metaphorical) signal-to-noise ratio of amateur radio is far greater than that of the internet.
Although this sounds drastic and is completely unfeasible, it would be nice if there was some sort of mandatory certification process before people are allowed to publish on the internet. The signal-to-noise ratio of the internet would improve greatly, and the interent would be easier to search and index. This would allow the internet to realise its potential as the greatest stockpile of mankind's knowledge, and this would be of benefit to everyone (including Joe Sixpack).
Here is an older, shorter article on this that was put up on CNN.com back in April. Not as much of a developed investigation, and it doesn't cover the whole history of Stanley and Pixelon the way the Standard does, though.
Maybe some folks having trouble with The Standard can still get the Basic Lowdown from this....
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Well, we did create the Internet. We don't charge you for your domain names, although perhaps we should.
:)
We also know to capitalize Internet and Net when talking about the Internet.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Leave technology to engineers and science to scientists! Internet and all related technologies are too often being misused by people who want to look intelligent. If they loose money because of this than :-))
The U in UDP is actually Unreliable - TCPIP makes a one shot fire-off-the-packet-and-cross-my-fingers stab at sending it. If it doesn't get to where it should, unlucky.
The concept of a "socket" introduces a "sliding window" concept over the stream of UDP packets which provides error control and recovery. That is why UDP is quicker than a socket based connection, although it's use is limited because you never know if your packet got there.
Anyway, back on the topic of your comment - what "nice laws" do you think the UK needs, from Scandinavia? This is not a troll, I'm a UK resident & interested in what you think.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Agreed. The VC industry has really changed over the last 10 years. Why?
1. More people becoming VCs. I mean, it's not as if every VC firm was a Draper Jurvetson or Battery Ventures before-- now, if more people are bent on becoming VCs, you can bet that one outcome is bad VCs
2. VCs have more money than ever before under management. Peolpe don't give VCs money in order to draw interest-- they want VCs to DO SOMETHING. This means that the pressure is on to invest, even if the ideas or opportunity aren't that great.
3. Many VCs (although not all) don't have the appropriate experience to validate technical claims. This is fine, they can hire people to do it. However, this fact, combined with #1 and #2 means that there is a rush to invest that may lead to investment in bogus technology.
I kind of agree with both of you. In a way there is lack of education of the AOLiens (oh, well...a lot of people out of AOL too) I preferred the times when was *I* newbie and I tried to get integrated in the big world of internet, at that time still dominated by the people who *know*. People were always eager to help me at those times...but then I asked for help of course :-)
/. once said AOL should introduce some kind of "internet-apness-certificate" to allow the AOLiens on the internet. Kind of a driving license, even with one you do so much stupidities but at least you've got a base :-)
Unfortunately we (I'm no newbie anymore) are the minority now. When I see people writing all caps I politely explain them netiquette, instead of flaming them to death... It's not because we understand what we do, that we have to regard the newbies as lesser beings. No, it is our role to educate them and show them what is wrong and right in this vitual place called "the internet".
Actually someone in
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
right on, don't tell me the mullet isn't coming back in style
The U stands for User - see RFC1700.
What did this guy really think he was doing? He probably could have pulled it off had he not been such a weirdo. I mean sheesh. And hell if I had 16 Million dollars to spend I don't think that I would be spending it on some kinda party. Big Giant Head of my computer.
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
need some tech people. If they sent in any video person, they would have seen right away the whole thing is a joke.
I think your elitist vision of a net only accessible to the privileged educated few would be quite horrible
Why? Because we can have quality websites filled with stuff that we can appreciate? Because rather than having to pander to corporate whims we can design the web to suit us? What about this fills you with such fear?
What fears me most is that there are people out there like you who don't give people a chance to learn. The 'net is a place for people to learn, to share ideas, to be heard. If you don't want to be a part of the "lowly masses" then don't. I don't hear anyone crying because you didn't join them.
And as for those "lame" sites that people like to post with personal info for their friends and family, like everyone else here said, don't go there! What strikes me as odd is that a person of your caliber is complaining about websites that don't even regard you! Don't click there; it's really not that hard to not press your index finger on that groove. If you can't handle not clicking, then maybe you should hold off on visiting sites on the Internet until you have "graduated" and can prove to have some self-control.
...we get non-technical people buzzwording about so-called futuristic things and one year after their names are just good to appear in some Nerd edition of the Trivial Pursuit (R)(TM)(C)(!)...
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
This is not an internet con, but a con that happened on the internet. People get conned all the time, mostly older or gullible poor people ("lotteries are a tax on people with bad math skills" was a .sig I recently saw here), but also on the eager, greedy, and trusting.
That this happened on the internet is simply because the opprotunity was there, much like the telephone/mail scam artists that prey on the elderly all over the USA. More and more hoaxes, scams, and chain letters appear on the internet every day because of the speed and anonymity inherent in the tool. I think that the most important point of this story was that the man got caught, despite all of the advantages that an "internet con" has.
Computers can only simulate determinism. ~Hermetic.
The following excerpt of the article explains where the technology came from.
The magician who performed this feat was Digital Motion cofounder and president Robert Dunning, a former marketing manager at high-end computer manufacturer GST-Micro City in Southern California. Dunning used highly specialized hardware and software, much of it still in the testing phase, designed by Sunnyvale, Calif.-based FutureTel and other niche companies in the graphics and publishing industries. Dunning's achievement, according to Dunning, Hauswirth and the third Digital Motion partner, was in assembling off-the-shelf components in a way no one else had done before to produce high-quality video. Soon enough, Stanley would hijack Dunning's work, wrongly calling it proprietary technology that Stanley himself had developed.
I'm just wondering which "off-the-shelf" components these are.
I actually had to work with that guy at one point. At my last job we started using Pixelon's services for streaming movie trailers over the internet. Our first webmaster chose them because they broadcasted the Anaheim Ducks games. Their software was alright, but it was still only for broadband use. Anyway, I was wierded out by that guy's name, because I worked with a guy named Michael Fenne. And I remember him saying something about how his name was unique, and nobody else's in the world was spelled that way. Then we stopped using their services all of the sudden, and I wondered what the Hell was going on. So I ask my coworker Mike Fenne what happened, and he says that the feds think that he's the one that ran Pixelon. He didn't even know about the company, so obviously he was a little confused. Guess the FBI was confused too, because the names, and places of business were a little too similar to be coincidental. I guess it's a good thing that they found the impostor. He was a whack job anyway, and the company was like a rabid dog. They used to call all the time after the scandal first broke because they still needed clients. A very strange situation indeed. Sharkey
www.badassmofo.com
David Stanley has never been anything remotely resembling a preacher. He's never served as a pastor, never had a church, never had anything remotely resembling a ministry, never PREACHED, fer crying out loud. His grandfather is a respected pastor and elder, and his father has spent a lifetime serving in a church that he built. David, on the other hand, has never been anything at all but a con man. A very gifted one, granted. He's a guy who took the gifts that God created him with, and perverted them. Blech.
Can we try a little harder to avoid knee-jerk Christian bashing, please?
Sounds more like a Coen Bros. movie, like Fargo or the Big Lebowski. It's so wild and improbable--with bizarre details like the exec jumping out of a moving cab, and another returning in the nick of time from a horse riding trip with mud-caked cowboy boots--yet it really happened.
This would make a hilarious movie.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
whatever
Life is just a bowl of All Bran - Small Faces
Hmmmm....preacher versus con-man...hmmmm... Whats the difference? ;)
...the news that CmdrTaco is not REAL NAME of the
mysterious cult leader behind this awesome
futuristic-B2B-internet-forum-site! Next thing we
hear CmdrTaco is really some lame John Smith or
Bill Johnson or even Robert Moldav or something
typical like that. Who knows, truth is stranger
than fiction sometimes?
...we can also overcome thermodynamics.
These guys were purportedly trying to get VC backing for their perpetual motion machine recently.
In fact, some people who profess to be Christians, and many others of different beliefs, do indeed drink poison and live. Can you PROVE that these things are impossible? If you can't then you shouldn't make such strong statements.
Even the "unfaithful" can drink poison and live (alcohol's a poison, and plenty of people drink that)... now what about the other points he brought up? Lets see yer faithful ass get over there and move a mountain for us >:D
I'm sure he can't prove that those things are impossible, but at the same time I'm sure that no one can prove that they are possible (BTW, quoting the bible doesn't count as proof).
I think if you calm down a little bit we could have an intelligent discussion on the topic... if yer interested...
BTW - We have found evidence (but not proof) that dinosaurs existed, but there isn't even any evidence that people can do what was mentioned on faith alone.
Frederick Lenz (aka Rama) and the AUM group both
incoporated computer consulting in their religious cults (there are probably other examples). Both went after smart, disillusioned young people who could easily start up such companies. And these enterprises could change location quickly when the leader need to flee.
If you want video, you want multicasting. Not some new-fangled compression system, that's so much snake-oil.
IMHO, the idea of everyone getting full-screen video to their homes is one that CAN be realised today, with NO new code, just a lot of heckling of ISPs. The ISPs are the reason confidence tricks of this kind are even possible. If they gave the full potential of the Internet to their customers, then there'd be far less demand for more.
The ISPs are therefore as guilty as the con artists for stunts like this. If you artificially create a demand, by blocking supply, then you will create a market for people who claim to be able to beat the blocks.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It WILL work under Winblowze with Netscape 4.7 too. Of course, it had to buffer several megabytes (!) before it would play. Not quite ready for the 56K modems, ISDN or frankly anything less than 1 Mbps. The resulting image quality looks like a 10 year old GE with a misaligned yoke.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Bah. No one makes anyone play the lottery, just like no one makes me choose Pepsi over Coke despite the billions in advertising.
The REAL crime in the US WRT lotteries is the "prize paid over 20 years" bullshit, plus it gets taxed. Here in Canada, you win $15 million in the Lottery, you get a cheque for $15 Million, and it's a done deal.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
It seems that more and more people want full screen Video over the internet. Well I truly think it will be a while before this happens. The problem is not bandwidth but the undeterministic nature of Internet traffic (what some venders like to call the Quality of service.) I maintained a distance learning classroom for a University that had two full screen connection (one each way) on a signal T1 1.5 MB using H320. It ran as smooth and was a clear as any cable TV connection. I tried to do the same with H323 on a 100TX connection over IP using 350MHZ P2 and software compression and we are back to very small unclear picture. Add just a small amount of competing traffic and things went south quick. The H232 connection was good with hardware compression if there was no competing traffic but was never as good as H320 over a T1 at 100mb!! Forget doing this on the Internet. This problem is well understood. I wish I knew how he was able to get as fare as he did with out some one like me asking OK where is the magic and how do get around the deterministic problem.
I think the song (or the punchline) refers to some Loonie, approaching Dan Rather (not absolutely certain, but it was a famous news anchor), asking him "What's the frequency Keneth ?" and smacking him in his face.
Now, when Milos Forman just makes a movie with the approppriate title, this fact will be much better known :>
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
There was certainly a lot of general stupidity in this case. Anyone who "used to" or "works secretly" for the NSA/CIA/BlackHelicopter.gov should rase major suspicions. Of course, con men are very good at convincing you that this is "okay". But still, somebody should have looked into the product to see if he actually owned it--or if it even existed. Come the time of the mandatory prayer meetings and bizzare PA announcements I think I would have been very worried. I might argue that it is an internet con, as it was a streaming media format. There are more to come, with the IPO for the latest "BuySomeThingOnline.com" making Martha a fortune when all the company really owns is a couple workstations.
Not many people have had the experience of meeting a conman like this. I have. Twice. They have an almost supernatural force of personality and charm. They can make the most baldfaced lies and outrageous claims, like they were in the CIA and sold computers to Saudi oil barons, and they seem reasonable.
For any normal person such claims would fall flat on the ground, but people like this are not normal. They hack people the way that many of us hack computers. They know all the little ins and outs that let them get root on people's personalities.
If you find yourself entangled with a person like this it seems like there's no escape. They have a magnetism that draws people in and holds them there. You work the 36 hours and do the prayer meeting because all of your coworkers are. Because it seems like there's no way out.
If anyone finds themselves in a situation like this. Like I once did. You run. You cut your losses, no matter how big they may seem at the time. You cut all your losses and get the hell out.
A few pointers on guys like this:
I hope this helps!
PS: If you're feeling brave you can attempt retribution for your losses. But these folks believe in an eye-for-an-eye with interest.
Who has worked for someone like this before? You know, the cult leader type who makes proclaimations, expects undying devotion from his staff, regularly promotes and fires arbitrarily and so on? I worked for someone like this for awhile. He used to get depressed and sulk whenever he suspected people did not like or trust him. Then he would suddenly get happy and start screwing people over; cutting back their salary, reading their email, finding reasons to fire people, etc.
Oh, you worked for Apple?
Quoting:
VCs don't have the time or the inclination so they spread the risk around and louse a little on things like this. If you invest in 5 pixelons it only takes 1 transmeta to wash away all your pain.
Not to mention that they probably get some very decent tax write-off by "losing" a bit of money. Not sure how the US system works, but in Canada, you can deduct your investment losses off your taxes. Therefore, if they make a big amount on one Transmeta, they'll pay big taxes. Having a few pixelon go under just makes them pay less taxes. They dont diserve any sympathy. They're in it for the money, and their every move is a cold-calculated risk. In the end, no matter what, they win.
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
- VC's have too much cash, and are too quick to throw it away at any old IT startup.
- People have become so excited by the whole Internet and dotcom "bubble economy" that they will risk a whole lotta cash on the slim chance of making a quick buck.
- People are easily fooled by technology (As an example, one of the coders who worked at Pixelon said "They took an existing Windows player and modified it slightly, then called it our own", and the computer they "desgined" to encode the video was built from off the shelf components)
Now the scary thing is, this man can't be the only one to have the idea. How many more of these con-artists are there now on the internet?Syllable : It's an Operating System
Preacher-turned-conman is a redundant term, at least if you judge by the crop of televangelists in the US...
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
Investing in internet startups is such a risky thing that you expect to be coned sometimes. You assume that most of the ventures you put money into will go nowhere. To the goy who has dumped $x million into a venture lousing your shirt because the market isn't ripe for your product, the product comes out after a superior competitor or doesn't work at all is irrelevant. You sometimes louse all your money.
Venture capitalists survive by NOT putting all the eggs into one basket. The only thing special about being taken by a conman is that you will never deal with that person again. Other failed ventures are water under the bridge.
Look at it this way: If someone came to you 5 years ago and said he was going to build a 128 bit CPU that would run x86 instructions in software at native speeds with less than 1 watt of power would you buy in ? The truth is all the really cool investments look far fetched on the surface and you would need months of study before you can make an educated guess as to weather it's flatly impossible.
VCs don't have the time or the inclination so they spread the risk around and louse a little on things like this. If you invest in 5 pixelons it only takes 1 transmeta to wash away all your pain.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
So? People get what they deserve and if this helps get rid of some people too stupid to know better then it has only done the Internet a service. Since the rise of services like AOL there have been far too many people on the net who don't have a fucking clue about anything, and all they do is take up bandwidth by downloading huge fuck-off Flash animations and waste server space with crappy Geocities home pages that have pictures of themselves and their dogs - who gives a rat's arse about them?
In fact, I think the way foward here is for the Internet to be restricted to those who have the brains to pass a test on basic technical skills (such as what is UDP or what port does HTTP use) and general net etiqutte. At least this way we'd only get people who would use the net for something good and maybe the corporate dominance of the net would be stymied.
Unfortunately the US, which still seems to think that the net is their private playground (not suprising since the average USian thinks the US is the entire world) and refuses to accept a global controlling body, is so subservient to corporate interests and their well-paid lobbyists that getting this kind of legislation in is next to impossible. Thank God I live in Europe, where the kind of rampant capitalism the US practices is tempered with a more humane socialist brand of politics.
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
Praise be to the Lord, I've been trying to find the URL for Slashdot everywhere!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
In general, people call things "brands" which aren't brands. The classic example of a brand is Harley-Davidson -- people are prepared to pay extra for what is, objectively considered, an inferior motorcycle, because it is a Harley Davidson.
Are people prepared to pay more for books, because they come from Amazon? If not, then how can they justify capitalising marketing expenditure? Marketing a "brand" which does not command a brand premium may be a sensible thing to do, but it's not creating anything which is separable from the business as a whole; ie, I believe that Amazon are misleadingly flattering the P&L by bringing internally created goodwill onto the balance sheet.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
That article sounds like a storyboard for a Dilbert strip.
This is another view of the world.
I sometimes cannot tell the difference anymore. I guess if a company that gets a ton of VC money fails, then it is a con. If the company manages to do something with the VC money then it is a entrepreneral success-story, right? Well, that is the name of the game, isn't it?
My question is how legit is this news lead anyway? I ask because the reporting looks suspect.
Unfortunately I didn't get enough details about the situation before hiring on. The guy who sold them the algorithm had given them a demo using box with two audio inputs, which went into a circuit board, and two audio outputs coming out of the board. The demo consisted of running audio through the box, into their "analog digital" compression, and out again. Low and behold, the compression was so good they couldn't tell the difference!
You see, the executives were sold on the idea that "analog" sounds better than digital, so if they licensed an "analog" compression technique their digital audio product would sound better. The con artist even got them to pay $30,000 up front.
First the guy was supposed to provide custom boards containing the compression algorithms, but he had trouble getting parts that were high quality enough, and so the boards never arrived. For some more money, he offered to translate the algorithms into software. What the guy actually sent was a series of .exe programs that just crashed, and then would blame the problem on the fact that he was a hardware engineer, not a software engineer, and if we just were patient it would work.
At the same time the management was forcefully pushing to get the algorithm integrated into a new version of one of their products, and kept asking me why it wasn't finished yet. I unsucessfully tried to point out I couldn't integrate what I didn't have. As you might imagine with the radio industry, when I brought up the possibility that the guy might not have been on the up and up, the president of the radio software company got really defensive, yelling about how dare I insinuate that audio experts such as he and his vice presidents could have been fooled.
The product went forward with another algorithm, but to make a long story short, I was shortly canned thereafter. In hindsight I should have run out of there on the first day when they told the story about the "analog-digital" algorithm they were going to use, but hey, its hard to know what's going on when you're in the middle of things.
He claims a God-given power to defy reality.
Yeah, I know that came from his letter to his ex-wife, but still, isn't that what a lot of con men claim to have, and what he claimed 'his' technology could do?
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
My first big web job was building a site for a pyramid scheme company...we put up dozens of pages literally overnight at this guy's request, and it took us MONTHS to finally get paid.
I felt slimy writing code for that man. (Shudder)
These cons are all over the net, you're right, but judging from the number of 'read this email! it's true!' notes I get forwarded to me by clueless coworkers and family, the fact that this guy got caught is pretty amazing. Stupidity, and more importantly ignorance, go unchecked online. "If it's on the computer it must be true." Ack.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Damn! It's unbelievable: The things you can learn on /. :>
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
As someone else said below...it's all about greed. If somebody keeps telling you how he's going to make you a millionaire, and how easy and painless it's going to be, call the FBI. "Oy! Such a deal I got for you. Regis Philbin himself could not make you a millionaire any faster..." :-)
It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
ok, i won't joke about VC having a not-so-very-nice-because-of-some-historic-event-th at-we-want-to-forget-as-soon-possible ring about it... i won't do that. However, i developed a piece of software that does 25:1 datacompression. It also fills out your tax-forms. Furthermore, it's stable and doesn't crash. It's the best thing that ever happened to computing. It's next-generation software. It's also expensive. I want all /. readers to sent me money. Or signatures. I also collect signatures, you see? Preferably non-digital...
That is using small snipits of a book very unfairly. Some parts of what is written in the bible are metaphors.
This is a poor argument. How do you know some parts of the Bible are metaphors? And if you're going to argue that moving a mountain is a metaphor then I'm going to argue that heaven, hell, God, and the resurrection are all metaphors, too. What you are doing is just another form of "That's what it says, but that's not what it means."
While I have seen people peack in tounges and sometimes found out they are really an existing language, the majority of the passage you quoted is again using sybolic language, describing all of the great things his followers would do. It is sometimes used in heritcal cults, though I agree with you, there is no way I am going to first cyanide.
"Symbolic language"? Same argument as before; how do you know what is symbolic and what is not? And thank you for implying that you will, in fact, die if you ingest cyanide, despite the fact that scripture states the contrary. Tell me, if you disbelieve that part of scripture, what else to you disbelieve?
Godel's uncertainty therom proved that there are things that are absolutly true that are unprovable. Knowing this your insistance on proof will ultimatly fail at explaining everything, that has been proven.
This is the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time. What you are saying is "that [it] has been proven" that proof proves nothing.
Furthermore, I didn't insist on proof, and I don't believe things based on proof (except maybe mathematical theorems). I believe things based on evidence. Can I prove that there are no humans living on the surface of the sun? No. Do I believe that there are humans living on the surface of the sun? No. Why? Lack of evidence. Same thing goes for Zeus, Allah, and even your mythical god.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I'm suprised it's taken this long for a big con. We have a very interesting and liquid market in technology and the net. But you also have a combination of tech types who don't fully understand the market and market analysts who don't understand the technology. This is ripe for someone to come in and play one off against the other to get as much gain as possible.
Working for the (other) man